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Why Aren't Your Customers Listening To You?

Forbes Communications Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Carly Driscoll

"Why are my customers not listening to me?" asks the brand marketer.

Well, who are your customers and what are you trying to tell them?

Expanding on the second principle in my R.I.D.E. philosophy, let's take a look at how to take a brand from average to trusted through digital marketing strategy and solve the question above.

The starting point is to build a solid content marketing strategy. If a brand does not understand the true value of investing proper time, money and resources into building a content strategy, then there is no story to tell the consumer and they will fall short and lose the opportunity to build trust.

Building a content strategy is not hard, but it does take discipline. There are lots of marketing firms even giving away roadmaps on how to do this. It can easily be accomplished by focusing on two key elements. The first is defining exactly who your consumer is — and I mean truly knowing the consumer persona you want to speak to. Maybe for your brand, this includes multiple personas, and in that case, great! This brings me to the second element, and that is to set specific goals. Once you define exactly who you want to speak to, you need to define what you want to tell them and why. From there, you can start the fun part and work on how you will get your message across.

The R.I.D.E. principles outline how to take a brand from average to trusted through digital marketing strategy and touch on four key components to bring your consumer down the marketing and sales funnel. "R" stands for respond, which we will not get into today because that’s its own topic. "I" stands for inform, and this is what I want to dive into. "D" stands for drive, and "E" stands for entertain — two points that deserve their own space to discuss in more detail.

In order to "inform" your consumer, you must first know them. It's critically important to spend the time and do the research to get to know your exact target consumer so you can begin developing a content strategy that will speak directly to them. In today's digital world, where data is constantly and easily at our fingertips, brands that know their consumers and listen to them are better able to respond to them. They utilize the data they own in their databases or customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Here is how I like to think about informing my target consumer as we use various digital marketing tactics and channels to get them to our end goal, conversion. It doesn't matter what the conversion metric is; the goal is to get them there through strategic messaging and execution of the content you spent so much time and energy to create.

You've seen these written a million different ways, and ultimately, the process is always the same. However, as I mentioned above, you cannot bring your consumer down this funnel if you do not have the right content for them at the right time in order to inform them of what you want them to think or do.

• Awareness Stage: This is where you address problems your product solves, the needs that the consumer has, pain points your consumer is experiencing that your product can fix and trigger events. Trigger events are events that spark joy in your consumers. How does your product bring that person joy?

• Research And Discovery Stage: After multiple touchpoints with that consumer, they are probably starting the process of looking into your brand, coming to your website or checking your products out in a store. Here, your content should address key product features and benefits. Inform the consumer on those specific features and benefits in a direct and engaging way.

• Validation Stage: This is when you must rely on your loyal customers, and hopefully you've prompted them to talk about you. Think social proof: We often trust our friends on social media more than a brand, so entice your customers to talk about you. Amazon has created a demand for reviews, and how many of us might first go to Amazon to read the reviews and then go to the brand's website to purchase directly? Either way, reviews speak the truth. In your content strategy, let your current customer inform your potential new customers by bringing their stories to light and highlighting them or their reviews.

• Decision Stage: At this point, you have spent time, energy and money on the above stages. Now they are ready to click the "buy now" button or find the nearest store. So what are some additional added value points you can throw in or discounts you could offer? Could you run an early intro campaign to create anticipation for new product releases or run a limited time offer? These might be the tipping points to get them to purchase from your brand over a competitor. After all, you have spent time putting highly engaging, intentional content in front of them that speaks directly to them. It's like they already have a new best friend.

Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?